What ‘I Have the Best Parents’ Teaches Us About Parenting Kids With Learning Struggles
It’s 7:15 pm on the second night of fall parent-teacher conferences, and I’m wiping a coffee ring off my desk when Leo tugs my sleeve. He’s 9, in my 4th grade class, and he’s been hanging around the hallway while he waits for his parents to get back from parking the car. He shoves a crumpled piece of paper into my hand before I can say anything, says he wants me to read it first before they come in. It’s his most recent personal narrative assignment, written with that thick triangular pencil he keeps in his desk because regular pencils make his hand ache after 10 minutes. The first line, scrawled in uneven letters that tilt hard to the right, reads: I have the best parents.
His parents knock a minute later, and Leo pulls a chair up next to them instead of waiting in the hall like most kids. I tell him he can read his essay out loud if he wants, and he holds the paper up to his chest and starts. He writes that he has dysgraphia, that writing is hard, that his hand gets tired fast and sometimes he mixes up letters even when he knows exactly what he wants to say. He talks about throwing his notebook in the trash at the end of last school year, because he didn’t want anyone to see how messy his writing was. His mom found it when they got home, he says, and she didn’t tell him he had to try harder. She just ordered him that thick pencil and a pack of lined paper with bigger spaces between the lines.
He gets to the part about the science fair, and his voice gets a little louder, proud. Last month, he remembered at 8 pm that he had to turn in his write-up the next day. He started crying because he couldn’t write a whole page in one night. His dad didn’t yell. He pulled up his laptop, Leo told him what he did for his project on bean plant growth, and dad typed it. Leo just had to write his name at the bottom. He got a C, he says, but I put a gold star on it because it was all his idea. He looks up at me, grinning, and reads the last line: I don’t write as fast or as neat as the other kids, but my parents don’t make me. That’s why I have the best parents.
At the start of the year, when I evaluated Leo and referred him for testing, I was bracing for the conversation I’ve had a hundred times. Parents get defensive, or they panic, they ask what they can do to get him caught up by Christmas, they talk about signing up for two hours a week of tutoring, buying the latest online program that promises to fix dysgraphia in three months. I’ve seen it so many times: a kid who already hates writing ends up doing an extra 30 minutes every night after school, and soon they’re refusing to turn in any work at all, or saying they’re stupid. That’s what I expected with Leo.
But when we met after the diagnosis, the first thing his parents asked was “What does Leo say is hard?” Not “What do we need to fix?” They told me they’d already started adjusting homework at home: instead of making him write all 10 spelling words three times each, he writes each once and says the other two out loud. If an assignment asks for a paragraph, he does two sentences, and that’s enough for the night. They don’t do 20 minute practice sessions. They do five minutes, after dinner, before he plays video games. If he’s having a bad day, they skip it entirely and email me to let me know.
I’ve been teaching 11 years, and I can count on one hand how many families do this. Most of the time, parents think any struggle their kid has needs to be fixed as fast as possible, that if they don’t push hard enough, their kid will fall behind forever. But what Leo’s essay drives home is that the thing kids care about most isn’t whether they hit their grade level benchmarks on time. It’s whether they still get to be a kid even when they’re struggling.
This doesn’t mean you ignore the struggle, or skip getting your kid support. It means small, low-effort adjustments that work for your family, instead of checking boxes that work for everyone else. If your kid struggles with writing, you don’t need a $200 online program. Try swapping 10-sentence homework for two, if that’s what they can handle that night. Email the teacher and ask if that’s okay; nine times out of 10, we’d rather have your kid turn in two good sentences than 10 messy, frustrating ones. If you have a last-minute panic like Leo’s science fair, don’t finish the assignment for them, and don’t yell. Help them meet the requirement in a way that fits their ability: type what they dictate, let them do a one-minute presentation instead of a written report, ask for an extra day. It’s not coddling, it’s meeting them where they are.
Leo’s parents don’t avoid talking about his dysgraphia either. They don’t tell him “you’re just as good as everyone else, there’s nothing wrong with you.” They say “writing is harder for you than it is for other kids, that’s just how your brain works. We’ll find what works for you.” That specific, honest phrasing does more for his confidence than any empty encouragement ever could.
Last week, Leo turned in a full paragraph for a writing assignment. It’s still smudged, there are three big holes where he crossed out words so many times, and half the letters still tilt sideways. It’s still below grade level, and he probably won’t be caught up by the end of the school year. I don’t know what he’ll be when he grows up, or if his writing will ever be neat. His parents told me after the conference that they still have bad nights, where Leo gets frustrated and throws his pencil, and they get tired and wonder if they’re doing enough. They’re not perfect, and they don’t have it all figured out. But when a 9 year old stands in front of you, crumpled paper in hand, and proudly tells you he has the best parents, you don’t need a perfect ending to know that something is going right. The best parents aren’t the ones who fix all their kid’s problems before dinner. They’re the ones who let their kid struggle, and stay there with them while they do it.
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